Purchased for $760,000 in May 2006, a rough and tumble (and tenant occupied) 4252 22nd Street returned to the market in September 2008 asking $1,495,000.
From the listing at the time:

Contractor special/investor sweat equity. Beautiful home in the heart of Noe Valley. Owners started work, needs your finish. City Permits and plans are completely approved as of mid November. Plans are available for review. Tenants will be out by March 15th or sooner.

The tenants are gone, as is a working kitchen, and the list price has been reduced a number of times. Now advertising “pre-foreclosure opportunity!” and asking $749,000 cash (no kitchen equals good luck tough times getting a mortgage).UPDATE: From a plugged-in reader:

You can get loan on a house without a kitchen (I did it recently). The bank added a reserve to the loan if they needed to get in and add a kitchen (and a bath in my case) for resale if they were stuck with the property. I’m not paying on that reserve it’s only used if needed, and added to the loan amount total vs. comps to confirm they are still good. We put a healthy chunk down but didn’t pay all cash.

Comments from “Plugged-In” Readers

The former asking price is classic symptom of a speculative market : sellers asking for the sky with some chance of actually receiving it.
Now they are much more down to earth. The irony is that the property’s value may actually increased now that it is not tenant occupied. I see the incomplete remod, but that could be remedied with $100K thrown in to finish the house to bare essentials. Or maybe a more serious problem lurks.
I’d expect this to sell for much higher than the asking price _if_ they were not requesting a cash deal.
Why cash ? This does not make sense because it dramatically reduces the size of their buyer pool and hence lowers the possible proceeds.

^^^ Then why not just spend $5k dropping in a minimal, ugly, cheap, but functional kitchen to meet the loan requirements. You’d make that $5k back many times over by opening the market wider even though all potential buyers plan to rip out the temporary kitchen.

@ Milkshake,
Have you seen it? There was never a chance at 1.495M.
I’d guess there are other problems. Probably numerous properties and numerous lien holders scattered around. The cash thing is due to no bank lending on a house without a kitchen. There are other ways to get this done tho. “The haart of Noe” this is not either. It’s on the border of Noe and the Castro, the very street that marks the border. It’s pretty far west u[p the hill too.

No, I have never seen it but have seen places like this sold for a dirt value in excess of $1M.
I agree that this is hardly the heart of Noe, but a pretty decent location nonetheless. What would you call it ? Upper Noeureka ?
I just love the staging by the way. That surfboard four poster bedroom with the black Pink Floyd “presence” whatzit on the bed : surely this will be mimicked in next year’s designer showcase.

Have you seen it? There was never a chance at 1.495M.
I thought in another thread, anonn, you were arguing that realtors don’t want to waste their time with overpriced listings. Wasn’t there a listing agent for the $1.495M list?
You could argue that the client drives the pricing and is often obstinate (which is what you do argue), but the realtor is not a slave – he can refuse the listing if he thinks it’s a waste of time.

Then why not just spend $5k dropping in a minimal, ugly, cheap, but functional kitchen to meet the loan requirements
if those last pictures are of the kitchen, then the kitchen will cost far more than $5k to do, even if you do it cheaply
my guess is that the current owners have run out of cash, so they *can’t* do it themselves.
I have no idea if this place is “worth it” or not, but it seems a better buy than much of what I’ve seen of late, especially if permits are pulled. much of the work except the kitchens/baths seems fairly well on the way to completion. The problem of course is that kitchens/baths tend to cost a lot to renovate, and I would worry about hidden costs on a property like this. I’d House Detective it first to see what’s hidden.
a question for sparky or anonn:
will a bank lend on a property that has a kitchen if the kitchen is VERY barebones? for instance, if there is a fridge/stove/cabinets but the floors and walls aren’t done?
in other words, could you get a mortgage on this place if somebody did just put $5k into it but left the studs exposed, etc…

LMRiM, you expect anonn to be consistent? You realize that he “contributes” only one point over and over. If somebody says “X” he responds with “not X.” Consistency, logic, substance, decorum be damned. That is it. He stopped contributing anything useful about a year ago and is now just the SS curmudgeon. Makes for some good laughs though. His posts remind me of the logic and debating skills of the guests who would shout at each other on Jerry Springer years ago.

Wasn’t there a listing agent for the $1.495M list?
Do you understand anything about anything in r.e.? This is not a condo being off by 8%. This is purely a seller getting into a whole lot of debt and setting a “rescue me” price. I’ve followed it. But again, believe whatever your navel is telling you today. Joe, haven’t heard from your singular dismissive perspective in a while. Can you change your name four times and follow me around for a while like old times? Thanks in advance.

Ex-SFer,
I think a local bank might lend on a very barebones kitchen if a contractor with an easily digestible track record — or a person with significant cash down, or both — were to buy the property. The problem is, who’s going to shell out that 5K even? In situations such as this one you run the risk of various lien holders or even the IRS flexing their muscles at the 11th hour. Some might say, so what? 5K is peanuts. That’s not so much the issue as the time and effort which might all go for naught.
The options for this one, to me, are a)to approach a local lender with a well reasoned story. Or b) to get the first position lender to work with you, or c)to let it ride and take your chances at foreclosure, as you’ll have seen the property and few of the others at the courthouse steps will have done so.

Without a complete and finished kitchen there can be no valid residential occupancy permit. The kitchen needs to have walls and floors that can withstand liquid be kept clean and sanitary. The exact criteria used to enforce this vary, but whatever SF requires exposed studs are not acceptable for food preparation areas.

es auden, there are bad seeds in all professions, but in a profession with virtually no barrier to entry, there seem to be an unusually high number of incompetent hacks in real estate sales and lending.
Most have been thinned out recently, but they’ll all be back if/when things ever turn around.
Plus, many RE agents will take a listing just to get contacts from an open house and marketing efforts and steer them to a reasonably priced property.

RealtyTrac is showing an auction date of July 15, but it’s not on PropertyShark’s foreclosure calendar. Perhaps the auction date got pushed back (I can’t imagine why the bank wouldn’t want this house on the books!?) Its zoned RH2, so maybe there’s the possibility for an enterprising developer/contractor to add another story and go condo.

From the MLS Listing: has to be cash purchase
Please ! Who is walking around with 780Gs in their pockets ? The only person(s) that come close to that, in my mind, are Sean P.Diddy (the former Puff Daddy) and OutKast’s “Umbrella Man” Bentley 🙂

This is a great way to get rid of pesky tenants – tear out their kitchen. Seriously, since the permits for the kitchen are apparently pulled whatever you put in would have to match the approved plans and be inspected and signed-off by DBI before it was any different to the bank than having no kitchen.

Ex-Sfer,
You can get loan on a house without a kitchen (I did it recently). The bank added a reserve to the loan if they needed to get in and add a kitchen (and a bath in my case) for resale if they were stuck with the property. I’m not paying on that reserve it’s only used if needed, and added to the loan amount total vs. comps to confirm they are still good.
We put a healthy chunk down but didn’t pay all cash. These sellers don’t know what they are doing, and are not helping their cause with that language. Savvy buyers will make the dollars work.
They are getting real with the asking now. It was a joke before, as the finished product over there would sell for about $1.8M. There is a lot of work and money to spend to get to that point; It looks like a full height brick retaining wall in the last 2 shots, low head height most everywhere, bathrooms, kitchens, cha ching.